You're two episodes into something good, the screen drops to black, and the Fire TV logo floats back up like nothing happened. Twenty minutes later it does it again. The stick isn't haunted and it usually isn't dying either. A Fire TV Stick in a restart loop is nearly always being starved of power, slowly cooked behind the TV, or tripped up by software that didn't install cleanly. Work through these in order. Most people never get past the first one.
Check what's feeding it power
The stick wants 5 volts at a full amp from its own wall adapter. A TV's USB port puts out roughly half an amp, which is enough to boot the stick but not enough to keep it fed once you ask for 4K or a heavy app. So it browns out, resets, and repeats. Looks dramatic. It's just hungry.
- Plug the included power adapter into a wall outlet instead of the TV's USB port. Lost it? Any decent 5V/1A or stronger USB adapter does the job.
- Run your fingers down the USB cable and check both plugs. A frayed or kinked cable causes split-second power drops that look exactly like software crashes.
- Skip the crowded power strip if you can. A tired strip sags under load, and the wall outlet is boring but reliable.
If the loop stops here, you're done. Enjoy your show.
Let it cool off
Sticks live in the worst climate in the house: the sealed pocket of hot air directly behind a running TV panel. Get the internals hot enough and the stick protects itself by shutting down, which from the couch reads as a random restart. Summer makes this worse, and so does a closed media cabinet.
Touch the stick. If holding it is unpleasant, you've found your cause. Unplug it for 15 minutes, then use the short HDMI extender cable that came in the box to drop the stick below the TV where air actually moves. Cabinet doors stay cracked open. That's it.
Do a real power cycle
Pull the power cable out of the stick itself and wait a full 30 seconds, not five. Thirty seconds lets the hardware drain completely instead of warm-booting straight back into the same jammed state. Plug it in, let it boot, and keep your hands off the remote for two minutes.
If the stick stays up long enough to use, there's a tidier version: hold Select and Play/Pause together for about 5 seconds and it restarts itself on command.
Update Fire OS, then evict the troublemaker
An update that half-installed will leave the stick rebooting while it tries and fails to apply the same patch over and over. Head to Settings > My Fire TV > About > Check for Updates, then let anything pending finish completely on wall power without touching it.
And if the restarts began right after you installed one particular app, don't overthink the coincidence. Settings > Applications > Manage Installed Applications, pick the newest arrival, clear its cache, and uninstall it if the loop comes back. Sideloaded apps are the usual suspects here, followed by anything that runs in the background.
Try the other end of the cable
Occasionally the stick is fine and the TV input is the problem. Move the stick to a different HDMI port and, if you use HDMI-CEC device control, try switching it off in the TV's settings to rule out a handshake fight between the two.
Factory reset, and when to walk away
Still looping? Hold Back and the right side of the navigation ring together for 10 seconds and the stick will offer a factory reset even if you can't reach the menus. You'll be setting it up from scratch, so have your Amazon password handy.
If a fresh reset on a known-good wall adapter still ends in a reboot loop, the hardware itself is failing. Check whether it's inside Amazon's one-year warranty. If not, replacement is the sane move; these sticks are cheap and flash storage does wear out. A stick that loops through all of the above has earned retirement.